When the angry rain finally ran dry, and the screaming wind slowed to a hush, Cyclone Gabrielle had laid waste to Auckland’s wild west coast.
The earth had moved, and it took Muriwai with it.
Deadly landslides rolled down steep cliffs and claimed the lives of two firefighters. It left behind 130 red-stickered homes – more than anywhere else in the country.
Muriwai pulled down the shutters, it just wasn’t safe for non-locals to enter.
Three months later, TVNZ's Sunday was the first film crew invited in behind the cordons. It was shocking.
Crushed cars and houses flattened, reduced to splinters by huge waves of mud and trees.
Fragments of lives buried in large, sticky piles of that mud. Glimpses of a community that once was.
Some of the people who left their homes that night have never been back. Some never will.
'A beautiful community'
Over the past four months Sunday has stayed alongside shattered residents as they waited and waited for government and council to tell them whether their homes were safe enough to return to.
Charlotte Reynolds lived on Domain Crescent, a street in the pathway of one of the most destructive landslides.
“This is a beautiful community,” she said.
“There’s always someone here to put flowers in your letterbox or drop off a batch of muffins.”
But in the middle of her house now lies a massive pine tree, propelled like a missile by the raging landslides, blasting through 16-year-old Amalia’s bedroom, past the kitchen and into the lounge.
Just moments before a firefighter had appeared in Reynolds' garden, yelling at them to get out as quickly as they could.
The house next door had completely collapsed.
“I left with my daughter, my dogs, my husband’s ashes and my book, can you believe it? I thought I'd probably just be out of the house for the night.”
Reynolds hasn’t been allowed back. Her house is red-stickered.
Just a couple of minutes away on Motutara Road, Lachlan MacKinven is also not allowed back home, even though there’s no damage to his house or land.
MacKinven and his five-year-old daughter live at the base of Muriwai’s steep and brooding cliffs – the council felt the looming risk of the neighbouring landslides is still too high.
Home for the past six months has been a caravan with a single bed that he shares with daughter Charlotte.
“It is cheaper,” he said.
“Our mortgage is more than half my income each week. If we could have mortgage relief, we could afford to rent suitable accommodation.”
Insurance picked up the rental tab for many of those who couldn’t go home but that was running out after three months.
There was also government support that came through the Temporary Accommodation Service, although that didn’t work for a community like Muriwai where it seemed every house has at least two dogs.
“They offered me a place in the city,’” said Reynolds.
“But you can’t take your animals.”
Earlier this week Auckland Council reached a deal with the Government worth close to $1 billion which will approve a buyout package for hundreds of uninhabitable properties after the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.
The damage to Muriwai has meant lengthy and complicated geotechnical assessments.
MacKinven and Reynolds will be among those nervously waiting for a phone call or the ping of an incoming email on Monday, provisionally telling them whether they can stay or must go.
They’ll have five working days to give feedback on their property’s risk assessment.
Whatever the outcome, the people of Muriwai have come to realise their beloved community will never be the same.
“Many people say it won’t,” sighed MacKinven.
“Unless the council can free up more land in this area to build on. I don’t see how we can keep the whole community together.”
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